The Queen, Bono and one of Donald Trump's closest advisors
are among those whose offshore investments have been revealed in the largest
ever leak dubbed the "Paradise Papers". The 13.4million files, which
were obtained after a hack on law firm Appleby which has offices in Bermuda,
the Isle of Man and a number of other tax havens, show the complex financial
dealings of the super-rich and major
global corporations. Tory donor Lord Michael Ashcroft, Donald Trump's advisor
Wilbur Ross and Arsenal football club stakeholder Alisher Usmanov have been
named in the documents alongside Stephen Bronfman, chief fundraiser and senior
adviser to the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau and a dozen of Trump
administration advisers, Cabinet members or major donors who appeared in the
records. They documents show that in 2005 the Queen's private estate invested
£7.5m in Dover Street VI Cayman Fund LP, held on the Cayman Islands, which in
turn invested in BrightHouse, a rent-to-own firm which has been criticised for
irresponsible lending, and off-licence chain Threshers. The Queen does not
manage the Duchy of Lancaster's investments, which are decided by a council,
and pays tax voluntarily on any income. However it is the first time that the
Queen's offshore investments have been revealed. It comes just a year after the
release of the so-called "Panama Papers", in which the hidden
millions of some of the world's richest and most powerful were exposed sparking
the downfall of several governments around the world. TELEGRAPH

David Cameron's
former energy minister lands top job as chairman of metals firm owned by
Russian oligarch

Greg Barker has been hired by the high-profile oligarch Oleg
Deripaska at his firm EN+. The firm hopes the hiring will boost the firm's
credentials as it prepares to ask UK investors for money by selling shares on
the London stock exchange. Lord Barker is the latest former minister in the
Cameron government to accept a job in the corporate world. Earlier this year it
was revealed that 52 former ministers now have jobs outside Parliament. A host
of ministers from David Cameron's Coalition have roles in the private sector,
including pensions minister Steve Webb and Owen Paterson, the ex-Northern
Ireland Secretary. Lord Barker, who was given a peerage in 2015 and organised a
PR trip to the Arctic in 2006 to promote Cameron's green credentials, has also
worked for Russian oil oligarch Roman Abramovich. Critics said it was yet
another example of the harmful revolving door between ministers and industry. Stefan
Stern, director of the High Pay Centre, which campaigns against high corporate
pay, said: 'It is a concern if people see politics and a political career as
some kind of stepping stone or halfway house to their real career.' DAILY MAIL

HSBC accused of
“possible criminal complicity” in South Africa scandal

Lord Hain said he had handed new evidence to the chancellor
about the alleged involvement of a British bank in the “flagrant robbery” of
South African taxpayers. The Gupta corruption scandal began when the
Indian-born family was accused of allegedly using its vast wealth to wield
influence over South Africa’s president, Jacob Zuma. The Guptas and Zuma deny
any wrongdoing. Hain told the Lords he had obtained information that “shows
illegal transfers of funds from South Africa made by the Gupta family over the
last few years from their South African accounts to accounts held in Dubai and
Hong Kong... Many of the transactions are legitimate, but many certainly are
not... The latter illicit transactions were flagged internally as suspicious,
but I am informed that they were told by the UK headquarters to ignore it.” Hain
said the transactions were disguised, originating from one bank account before
being split in a number of different accounts. The former Labour minister’s
latest intervention comes two weeks after the chancellor referred concerns
about Standard Chartered and HSBC to the FCA, SFO and NCA. He did so after Hain
wrote to him saying high-level sources in South Africa had alerted him to the
exposure of British financial institutions to the affair. GUARDIAN

UK mobile phone firms
overcharging customers after contracts expire

Three of Britain’s biggest mobile phone networks keep
charging customers extra for their handsets after they have been paid off,
leaving them up to £38 a month worse off, a consumer group has said. Citizens
Advice found that Vodafone, EE and Three were overcharging customers who failed
to change their contract an average of £22 a month, rising to £38 a month for
buyers of premium phones including the Samsung Galaxy S8, Apple iPhone and Sony
Xperia XZ Premium. Many contracts are paid monthly over two years and cover the
cost of the customer’s phones, which can be hundreds of pounds to buy outright.
At the end of the contract, the customer owns the handset and is free to stay
on the contract or switch. However, Citizens Advice research found that
Vodafone, EE and Three continued charging customers the same amount as when
they were paying for the handset. Over-65s were the most likely to be caught
out, with 23% on a handset-inclusive deal remaining on it for more than 12
months past the end of the fixed contract, compared with 13% of under-65s. Overall,
36% of people with a handset-inclusive mobile phone contract stayed on it
beyond the fixed period, with 19% staying in the same contract for more than
six months afterwards. Nina Bibby, chief marketing officer of O2, accused their
rivals of undermining trust and reputation in the mobile phone industry, and
said they separated device and service charges in monthly bills: “We’d like to
see the other operators review their position and follow our lead.” GUARDIAN

One in four people
'trapped' in low-paid jobs with 'little chance of escape'

Low pay is "endemic" in the UK, especially among
women in their early 20s who juggle work with childcare responsibilities, said
the Social Mobility Commission. Research showed that only one in six low paid
workers managed a permanent move to better paid jobs in the past decade, with
half fluctuating in and out. On average, people stuck on low pay have seen
their hourly wages rise by just 40p in real terms over the last decade,
compared to a £4.83 pay rise for those who have permanently
"escaped", said the report. Older people are less likely to leave low
paid jobs than their younger counterpart, while low paid workers were mostly
likely to escape in Scotland and least likely to escape in the North East, it
was revealed. Conor D'Arcy, senior policy analyst at the Resolution Foundation,
which conducted the study, said: "Britain has one of the highest
proportions of low paid work in the developed world, and while three-quarters
of low-paid workers did manage to move into higher-paying roles at some point
over the past decade, the vast majority couldn't sustain that progress. This
lack of pay progress can have a huge scarring effect on people's lifetime
living standards.” TELEGRAPH

Insurers 'burying
price rises' in renewal letters

Rules introduced in April require companies to
"clearly, accurately and prominently" display a renewal premium and
what was paid the year before. A message to encourage customers to shop around
is also stipulated, under rules set by the regulator. The new rules were
expected to collectively save consumers up to £103m a year - but the regulator
has said some insurers and brokers are failing to follow the rules properly. The
trade body for insurers said there had been "teething problems" with
implementing the new system. The rules cover all general insurance products,
such as home, motor, pet and travel cover. Steven Murdoch, from London,
complained to John Lewis Insurance that there was not a like-for-like
comparison on renewal documents for home insurance. It gives last year's
premium in bold after the extra cost of paying monthly direct debit is added,
but the new quotation has the price in bold before the direct debit charge is
added. "It looks like the premium is about the same, when in fact it's an
8% increase," he said. The extra charge is shown in less prominent type. Admiral
- one of the largest insurers in the UK and a FTSE 100 company - gave last
year's quoted premium, before discounts were applied, rather than the amount
that the customer actually paid. M&S had not used the correct wording in
its four-year renewal offer for some customers. Ian Hughes, chief executive of
research agency Consumer Intelligence said that, although implementation had
been "patchy" there were signs of a rise in longstanding customers
shopping around for a better deal in motor insurance. Switching rates had
changed little, but that seemed to be because customers were being offered a
more competitive deal from their original insurer or were haggling on price. BBC NEWS

EU raids Daimler and
VW in widening cartel inquiry

The EU competition watchdog said in July that it was
investigating several German carmakers on suspicion they had conspired to fix
prices in diesel and other technologies over several decades. Daimler
unexpectedly revealed on Friday that it had claimed whistleblower status to
avoid any fines, while Munich-based rival BMW said EU officials searched its
offices. German magazine Der Spiegel reported in July that Volkswagen, its
units Porsche and Audi, Daimler’s Mercedes and BMW may have used industry
committee meetings to fix the size of tanks for AdBlue, a liquid used to treat
nitrogen oxide in diesel emissions. Strategic cooperation among German
carmakers is not unusual, but companies found guilty of breaching EU cartel
rules face fines of as much as 10 percent of their global turnover. The
industry has been hit with billion-euro fines on both sides of the Atlantic in
recent years for cartels related to parts including lighting systems, engine
coolers and bearings. REUTERS

£250m Tesco fraud
trial hears two staff quit over their concerns

Tesco's former finance head, managing director and food
commercial boss deny charges of fraud by abuse of position and false accounting.
Carl Rogberg, 50, Chris Bush, 51, and John Scouler, 49, are alleged to have
failed to correct inaccurately recorded income figures. The trial into alleged
fraud at Tesco has now heard that two members of its finance department
resigned in 2014 over concerns they may be compromising their professional
integrity. The two were unhappy about what they were being asked to do by
bosses. The situation had left some staff "in tears", and afraid they
would compromise their professional integrity if they continued to work at
Tesco. The prosecutor told the court about Richard Parsons, a project manager
at the supermarket, who in an exit interview said: "It has broken me"
and that he was angry at having been put in a position which compromised his
ethics. Jurors also heard that former Tesco accountant Aysen Nadiri quit her
role on August 26 2014. She had said senior Tesco management refused to accept
targets could not be met and they had a disregard, in Miss Nadiri's view, for
proper accounting principles. The court also heard that one of Tesco's senior
accountants, Amit Soni, who eventually presented findings of the hole in the
accounts to the board, spent weeks agonising about what he was going to do. In
an email on September 3 2014, he told colleagues: "Keep the file with you,
the whistle is about to blow." He added: "It has consumed my life in
the last four to five weeks, collecting information in secret, getting my team
to understand what I want and then doing it in a subtle way and only on my
desktop." BBC NEWS

Kobe Steel uncovers
more evidence of quality mistakes

Scandal-hit Kobe Steel has found fresh evidence of mistakes
with data on the quality of its products. The Japanese company said it had
uncovered a new case of fake data involving steel, and had also halted some
copper shipments from a plant. Kobe also said it had found a case of employees
not reporting evidence to an internal investigation. The number of companies
that may have used Kobe steel which was not correctly certified is about 500,
including carmaker Daimler, aircraft manufacturer Airbus, and the maker of
Japan's bullet trains. Among the new cases uncovered, the thickness of steel
supplied to customers "was fabricated", a Kobe spokesman told the
BBC. Kobe said that 3,793 tonnes of steel plates shipped to one customer had
the wrong measurements. The company has also stopped shipping about 43% of
copper products from its Hatano plant, near Tokyo, because it was found to
violate Japanese Industrial Standards (JIS) regulations, Kobe said on Friday. When
asked whether the problem of data fabrication could have been going on for more
than a decade, the spokesman said: "It could be longer than a decade, we
are looking into it now." BBC NEWS

Sunday, 1 October 2017

It comes after allegations that workers had changed
slaughter dates to extend the shelf life of meat. The Food Standards Agency
(FSA) has also been investigating the claims. The Guardian and ITV News claimed
an undercover reporter witnessed workers changing the "kill dates" on
chickens. They also allegedly saw meat of different ages being mixed together
and codes on crates of meat altered. In a statement, the company said an internal
investigation had shown "some isolated instances of non-compliance"
at its plant in West Bromwich: "We will only recommence supply once we are
satisfied that our colleagues have been appropriately retrained." Marks
& Spencer, Aldi, Lidl and The Co-op have stopped taking chickens from the
site while investigations take place. The company also supplies Tesco and
Sainsbury's, which are looking into the allegations. BBC NEWS

Carl Rogberg, 50, Chris Bush, 51, and John Scouler, 49, are
accused of falsifying profits to boost their own incomes in a scandal which
sent "shockwaves" through the stock market. The supermarket made a
public announcement to the stock market on September 22, 2014 which stated that
it had previously over-estimated its profits by £250 million, Southwark Crown
Court heard yesterday. It led to its shares falling by 12 per cent, wiping £2
billion off its total share value. Tesco's former finance chief, managing
director and food commercial head are charged with fraud by abuse of position
and false accounting between February and September 2014. Sasha Wass QC told
the jury: "Each of these three defendants used their managerial authority
and actively encouraged those working beneath them to falsify the figures and,
when those subordinate employees objected, the subordinate employees were
bullied or coerced into carrying on with this practice." The court heard
that Mr Rogberg, who was "directly responsible" for authorising the
falsified figures, received a remuneration package of more than £1 million in
2014. Mr Bush, who was in charge of the performance and "integrity"
of Tesco at the time, received nearly £3 million that year, and Mr Scouler, who
allegedly directed those beneath him to falsify income figures, received around
£1.5 million. Ms Wass added: "Each defendant would have had a very
personal interest in keeping the share value of the company high, because a lot
of their remuneration package included shares," she said. TELEGRAPH

HSBC fined £175m over
insider information being used in its currency trading business

The penalty was issued because the bank failed to stop
traders using inside information from clients. It comes as former HSBC trader
Mark Johnson, who is British, is tried in New York for allegedly making gains
from a £3billion currency deal. Johnson denies 'front-running' a deal made by
British firm Cairn Energy by buying the sterling ahead of the transaction and
then netting the bank billions of dollars when it went up and he sold later. With
regards to the fine, the Fed said HSBC 'failed to detect and address its
traders misusing confidential customer information, as well as using electronic
chatrooms to communicate with competitors about their trading positions'. DAILY MAIL

Comparethemarket.com
investigated over alleged deals with insurers

The site faces allegations that it has done deals with
insurers that prevent them from making cheaper offers on other websites – known
in the trade as most favoured nation clauses. Over the last decade price
comparison websites have become a major seller of insurance products as they
can be used by consumers to simultaneously check prices with hundreds of
insurers. The market is dominated by four big comparison websites: Comparethemarket.com,
Moneysupermarket.com, Confused.com and Gocompare.com. The Competition and
Markets Authority (CMA) had been investigating whether the sector was operating
as transparently as it should. It is thought that an insurance policy sold to a
consumer following a comparison site search can net that website as much as £60
commission, although payments are rarely disclosed. GUARDIAN

How power giants
trick and bully us into getting smart meters: Suppliers arrange fittings
without being asked and threaten to take away cheap deals

Suppliers have been ordered by the Government to offer smart
meters to all households in Britain by 2020 and face fines if they fail to meet
the deadline. Customers are not obliged to say 'yes' and can refuse to have one
installed. Yet customers have been bombarded with calls, texts and letters even
after they have refused one. At least one major firm is sending out letters
saying they have made a smart meter installation appointment, despite the
customer never requesting one. Another says this is something they are
trialling. If customers do not want a new meter, they have to call and cancel,
or an engineer will just turn up. Suppliers are also sending out letters and
texts to customers that fail to make it clear that smart meters are optional. EDF
Energy is texting customers: 'We need to upgrade your meter to a smart meter',
while E.ON is sending letters that state in bold, red type: 'Reminder: your
meter is being phased out'. Scottish Power's letters say 'Action required' next
to a large, red exclamation mark. Some E.ON customers have even been told they
face losing their cheap deal if they refuse to have a new meter. And last week,
the supplier said it would replace its expensive standard tariffs with rolling
deals that cost up to £262 a year less — but only if customers get a smart
meter first. But as many as one in five UK households says they do not want
one. Some are concerned about how their personal data will be used. Others
don't want the hassle of waiting in for an engineer to call. Many more are
reluctant after learning that most of the 7.36 million meters already installed
will stop working if you switch to a different supplier. Money Mail does
understand that this problem will be fixed through a software update — without
an engineer even needing to visit. But no details have been confirmed so far. DAILY MAIL

Ryanair law breach
leaves UK regulator CAA 'furious'

The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has launched
"enforcement action" against Ryanair for wrongly claiming it did not
have to re-route passengers on rival airlines. The CAA's chief executive Andrew
Haines said: "People shouldn't have to choose between low fares and legal
rights." Mr Haines singled out Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary for particular
criticism, telling Radio 5live: "Michael himself said he wasn't going to
pay for passengers to fly on other airlines. That's against the law.” In
September, the airline announced the cancellation of up to 50 flights a day
through to the end of October, affecting 400,000 passengers. A fresh round of
flight cancellations will be between November and March and affect the travel
plans of a further 400,000 customers. The regulator said that on both occasions
Ryanair had failed to provide customers with "necessary and accurate"
information about their rights. The CAA said information provided on Ryanair's
website failed to make it clear that the airline was obliged to refund all
expenses incurred as a result of the flight cancellation. Those expenses
included meals, hotels, as well as transfer costs to re-route passengers on
other airlines when there was no suitable alternative, the CAA said. The
airline has said that passengers affected by the move will be offered
alternative flights or full refunds and had been emailed about advising them of
flight changes occurring until the end of October. They will also be offered
vouchers of 40 euros (£35) one way, or 80 euros return, towards alternative
flights on top of any refund. Ryanair has blamed the series of flight
cancellations on "messing up" pilot holiday rosters. BBC NEWS

Uber: London Mayor backs
talks after firm's apology

Uber chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi issued the apology
after the taxi-hailing firm lost its London licence. Mr Khosrowshahi said in an
open letter that Uber would appeal against the city's decision, but accepted
the company "must change". In deciding not to renew Uber's licence
beyond the end of September, TfL cited concerns about the firm's treatment of
criminal offences, medical certificates, and drivers' background checks. The
firm, which is used by an estimated 40,000 drivers and 3.5 million customers in
London, also says it will continue operating while its appeal is heard. Mr
Khosrowshahi, who took over at the firm less than a month ago, wrote on Monday:
"While Uber has revolutionised the way people move in cities around the
world, it's equally true that we've got things wrong along the way." "On
behalf of everyone at Uber globally, I apologise for the mistakes we've
made," Mr Khosrowshahi said. Earlier, Mayor Sadiq Khan accused Uber of
putting "unfair pressure" on TfL, with an "army" of PR
experts and lawyers. BBC NEWS

Sunday, 17 September 2017

The figures are well below the £100bn quoted by the
universities minister, Jo Johnson, and other members of the government this
year as they sought to push back against suggestions by the Labour leader,
Jeremy Corbyn, that his party would end tuition fees and “deal with” existing
student debts. As the IFS pointed out, the £100bn is the total for all
student loans, including those for maintenance, for students from outside
England, and for those incurred after fees were introduced in 1998 but before
they were raised to £9,000 a year in 2012. If only post-2012 debt for tuition
for students from England was scrapped, the policy would increase government
debt by around 1% of national income by 2050, or around £20bn in today’s terms.
The IFS also calculated that delaying the decision until the end of the current
parliament in 2022 would raise that bill from £20bn to £60bn. A cheaper
alternative would be to write off tuition fee debt above the £3,465 level of
undergraduate fees charged before 2012 – which would add £10bn to government
debt. The analysis also cautioned that the main beneficiaries of wiping out the
debts would be high-earning graduates, given that they pay back a higher
percentage of their loans than other graduates. That is because student loan
debt that is not repaid after 30 years (i.e. by low-earning graduates) is anyway
going to be forgiven. Therefore the government could pay for the additional
debt with a “modest increase” in the top rate of income tax, the IFS suggested.
Earlier this year the IFS calculated that young people from the poorest 40% of
families entering university in England for the first time this year will
emerge with average debts of around £57,000. GUARDIAN

One in ten British
adults now a second-home owner, leaving millions of properties empty

The figures published by the Resolution Foundation show that
the number of people with multiple properties rose from 1.6m to 5.2m between
2000 and 2014 - a 30 per cent increase in the proportion of adults who owned
more than one home. The analysis also suggested that most of these owners are
not landlords, with just 3.4 per cent of adults letting property out. This
would mean that 6.6 per cent of adults, or 3.4m people, have extra properties
that they leave empty as an investment or use as holiday homes. Laura Gardiner,
senior policy analyst at the Resolution Foundation, said that properties not
being used for rental could include "holiday homes, flats that adult kids
live in for free, empty properties they’re speculating on, MP’s with London
flats and constituency houses, people who’ve inherited their recently deceased
parent’s home and haven’t worked out what to do with it yet". The
think-tank examined data from the British Household Panel Survey and the Office
for National Statistics to find that while overall home-ownership has
plummeted, second home-ownership has risen dramatically. The proportion of
adults owning any property rose to a high of almost 66 per cent in 2002 but has
since fallen to just over 60 per cent. The majority of those owning second or
third homes were based in the wealthiest areas of the UK, the report added. Almost
six in ten landlords are based in the South East or South West, the East of
England and London. "This is where the young people are struggling to get
on to the property ladder which is why towns are banning holiday homes," said
Paula Higgins, of pressure group the Homeowners Alliance. "These people
have had years and years of benefit from a rising housing market - but you
shouldn't be making more money off your house than you do from going to
work." Last year the Cornish town of St Ives voted to ban the building of
second homes. The town, dubbed Kensington-on-Sea because of its popularity with
well-heeled west Londoners, held a referendum last May after figures revealed
that one in four new properties were being used as second homes. TELEGRAPH

Majority believe
public sector pay cap has been unjustifiable and now is the time to end it, new
poll says

Asked about the restraints on public sector pay since 2010,
51 per cent of those polled said they have been unjustified while just 26 per
cent said the Government had been justified in using the austerity measures. A
larger majority – 62 per cent – said now is the “right time” to lift the
restraints on workers’ pay in the public sector with just 14 per cent agreeing
with the statement “it is not the right time”. But the poll also highlights
that the Prime Minister has limited political capital to gain from lifting the
cap, with more people interpreting the end of the contentious policy as a
victory for the Labour leader. Downing Street said earlier this week that the
seven-year public sector pay cap is to be scrapped, unveiling a 1.7 per cent
hike for prison officers and improvements totalling 2 per cent in policy pay
for 2017-18. It is expected that ministers will announce further rises for
other workers in the public sector at the Chancellor’s Budget in November. INDEPENDENT

National Audit Office
points finger at Government welfare reforms over steep rise in homelessness

The latest report by the National Audit Office (NAO) on
homelessness states that the number of households living in temporary accommodation
in England has increased by 60 per cent — to 77,240 — in the six years since
March 2011. These households now contained 120,540 children: an increase of 73
per cent in the same period. Since 2011, the Department for Work and Pensions
has introduced a series of welfare reforms designed to reduce overall welfare
spending and provide incentives for benefit recipients to take up employment.
This included lowering the benefit cap on household incomes. “At the same
time,” the NAO says, “rents in the private rented sector in much of the country
— London in particular — have increased faster than wage growth. All of these
factors appear to have contributed to private rented properties becoming less
affordable, which in turn is likely to be contributing to homelessness caused
by the ending of an assured shorthold tenancy.” The proportion of households
accepted as homeless by local authorities “due to the end of an assured
shorthold tenancy” increased from 11 per cent in 2010 to 32 per cent this year,
it says. In London, the proportion rose from ten per cent to 39 per cent. In
the mean time, the number of households placed in temporary accommodation over
the border in another local authority that recorded them as homeless increased
by 248 per cent to 21,950. Homelessness, defined as having no accommodation or
being unable to continue to occupy any given accommodation, currently costs the
public sector £1.1 billion a year. More than three-quarters of this (£845
million) was spent on temporary accommodation last year, of which
three-quarters (£638 million) was funded by housing benefit. The NAO also
counted 4134 rough sleepers on a single night last autumn: 134 per cent higher
than a similar count in autumn 2010. The charity Housing Justice said: “...there
is a pragmatic reason for rethinking the underlying policy drivers here,
Homelessness costs the taxpayer £1 billion a year, the government has been
cutting housing benefit only to fund more expensive temporary accommodation
further down the line. Not only does this fail to deliver cost effectiveness
for the taxpayer it also creates chaos and misery in the lives of thousands of
people forced in to homelessness.” CHURCH TIMES

Universal Credit wait
a key factor in rent arrears, says DWP report

New figures published by the Department for Work and
Pensions showed that around one in four new claimants waited longer than six
weeks to be paid. Of those Universal Credit claimants who fell into arrears on
their rent, the majority said it was the first time they had fallen behind on
their payments in their current accommodation. Earlier in the week, Citizens
Advice said its research showed that those under the Universal Credit system
were more likely to struggle with priority debts. The publications, ahead of a
major acceleration in the roll-out of Universal Credit, has prompted debate
among MPs and calls for a rethink. Labour said the system was in "total
disarray", while Tory MP Heidi Allen told the BBC that the government
"should slow down a little bit and get it right". Universal Credit
combines existing benefits such as tax credits, housing benefit, income
support, Jobseeker's Allowance, and employment and support allowance. By 2022,
more than seven million households will receive Universal Credit - at least
half of which will be in work. A major rollout of the scheme begins soon,
following a series of delays. The system was originally scheduled to be fully
in place this year. Citizens Advice is calling for a suspension in the
roll-out. But the government said monthly payments reflected the way many
working people were paid. BBC NEWS

'Digital-token
investors should brace for total loss' says FCA

The City regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)
has warned consumers of the dangers of investing in digital tokens issued by
firms. So-called initial coin offerings can raise millions of dollars for firms
and consumers can make a gain if the new crypto-currencies then go up in value.
But the FCA says investors also stand to lose their entire stake in the
high-risk investments. In an initial coin offering (ICO), a firm sells digital
tokens, or "coins". These are often in exchange for a more
established crypto-currency such as Bitcoin or Ethereum. The new coins issued
by the firms can represent a voucher for some kind of future services, or a
share in the firm, or they may simply have no discernible value at all, the FCA
said. For example, Wild Crypto, an online gambling business which is developing
a crypto-currency lottery, sold almost 34 million "Wild coins" to
investors. Consumers got no stake in its operations for their cash, but
invested in the hope that the Wild coin lottery tokens would take off in
popularity. Companies can raise many millions of dollars in this way. US
identity verification firm Civic recently raised $33m (£26m), while blockchain
technology firms Bancor and Tezos raised more than $350m. Regulators around the
world are becoming increasingly concerned with the popularity of ICOs. Last
week China banned initial coin offerings, calling them "illegal fundraising".
In July the US Securities and Exchange Commission warned of the risks of ICOs,
and regulators in Singapore, Hong Kong and Canada have also pointed out some of
the dangers. BBC NEWS

PR company Bell
Pottinger collapses following claims it ran a 'racially divisive' campaign in
South Africa

Disgraced public relations company Bell Pottinger has
collapsed after it failed to find a buyer to save it from administration, in
the most spectacular fall from grace ever to hit the industry. The firm
collapsed after it orchestrated a ‘fake news’ campaign on behalf of the Gupta
family, one of South Africa’s wealthiest dynasties. Lord Bell, who is famed for
his willingness to represent dictators such as the late Chilean leader General
Pinochet, admitted he was instrumental in bringing in a lucrative
£100,000-a-month contract from a company called Oakbay, controlled by the
Guptas. Bell Pottinger fanned flames of outrage when it embarked upon a
campaign to divert attention from the Guptas’ ties with South African president
Jacob Zuma. To do so, it branded the president’s opponents as the agents of
‘white monopoly capital’, despite the fact these included other big Bell
Pottinger clients such as luxury goods giant Richemont. Industry body the
Public Relations and Communications Association expelled Bell Pottinger for at
least five years, saying its actions were likely to inflame racial discord. Henderson
said this weekend he plans to start again in the PR business once the dust has
settled. Lord Bell, who is accused by his enemies of conniving in the downfall
of his former company, said he will not receive any more instalments on the
seven-figure payment he agreed when he left the firm. About 270 employees will
lose their jobs. One consultant said: ‘There are a lot of young people working
here who are entirely blameless and now have an uncertain future.’ DAILY MAIL

Social media stars
face crackdown over money from brands

Instagram’s popularity with young people, and women in
particular – in April it reported 700 million members – has led to a roaring
trade between marketers and so-called influencers with large and engaged
followings. Members of the Kardashian family, who promote a range of products
from “detox” tea to waist-training corsets to their tens of millions of
followers, can reportedly command as much as $500,000 (£370,000) per post. But
even lower-profile celebrities can make a profit from the photo-sharing app
owned by Facebook. Elizabeth Olsen, who plays an influencer in the forthcoming
film Ingrid Goes West, has attracted 745,000 followers since she joined
Instagram for the first time in May, telling the LA Times: “Financially, it’s a
brilliant opportunity. I was only hurting my opportunities by not
participating.” With many paid-for promotions not disclosed, the blurry line
between advertisements and heartfelt recommendations has led consumer
protection bodies to take action against influencers for pushing brands they
have received payment from. In the UK, influencers have had to identify
advertisements with the hashtags “#ad” or “#spon” (sponsored) since 2014. In
April, the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) found the makeup blogger
Sheikhbeauty to have breached the CAP Code for non-broadcast advertisements by
failing to clearly label a post about a herbal detox tea brand as an
advertisement. This week the ASA ordered the reality television personality
Sophie Kasaei to remove her own photo of the Flat Tummy Tea she had shared with
her 1 million-plus followers in March. Last week the US Federal Trade
Commission (FTC) asked a number of high profile social media influencers to
clarify specific posts that had been identified as potentially non-compliant
with their rules. Reuters reported that the models Naomi Campbell and Amber
Rose and actors Lindsay Lohan, Vanessa Hudgens and Sofia Vergara were on the
FTC list. Analysis of the 50 most-followed celebrities on Instagram by the US
marketing firm Mediakix in May found that 93% of posts promoting a brand were
not compliant with the FTC guidelines. GUARDIAN

Thursday, 18 May 2017

The Health Secretary was interviewed on the BBC's Andrew
Marr Show after Theresa May said last week there "many complex
reasons" why nurses are increasingly turning to the charitable centres. It
comes after the Royal College of Nursing claimed that nurses are seeking debt
advice and increasingly turning to food banks. Mr Hunt said: "The minimum
a nurse can be paid in this country is £22,000 - £27,000 in inner London. The
average pay was £31,000. Is that enough considering the brilliant work that
they do? I think many people would say they want to pay them more. I think they
do an incredible job.” Nurses have had seven years of pay freezes. Mr Hunt also
acknowledged that failure to hit A&E targets was "not acceptable"
during Sunday morning's show, but insisted that the Tories were increasing
funding and recruiting more doctors and nurses. A separate target is for 92% of
patients to be treated within 18 weeks of referral by their GP. But the NHS has
not hit this target since February 2016 and performance has been slipping since
then. Insisting that focusing on the targets was not a "fair reflection of
the performance of the NHS" he said: "Just before the election was called,
at the end of March, the NHS published an independent report in which they said
that if you take most major conditions - heart attack, stroke, cancer, so on -
outcomes have dramatically improved over the last five years." EVENING STANDARD

In his new memoir, Greece's former finance minister Yanis
Varoufakis claims German finance minister Wolfgang Schauble candidly admitted
to him that he would not have endorsed an EU-ordered austerity plan. In one
exchange he said he asked Schauble whether he would sign up to the EU's
austerity measures, to which his German counterpart responded: 'As a patriot,
no. It's bad for your people.' The former Greek finance minister claims to have
secretly recorded his conversations with top figures, and says his experience
showed how far Germany was willing to go to protect the single currency. During
one of these conversations, he said former US president Barack Obama agreed
that 'austerity sucks', but said he could do nothing to influence Germany. In
his new book, The Telegraph reports, the former Greek finance minister claims
Germany blocked a Chinese rescue deal for Greece. He also warned British Prime
Minister Theresa May not to expect the EU to play fair during Brexit
negotiations. DAILY MAIL

The Department for Education is spending “well over the
odds” in its bid to create 500 more free schools, while local authority
buildings crumble, the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) warned.
In a damning new report, the committee criticised the Government's focus on
free schools, which it said were sometimes opened in areas with no shortage of
places for pupils while existing schools struggle to make ends meet. The
cross-party board also noted that each pupil place in a new free secondary
school “costs 51 per cent more than places provided by local authorities”. This was largely due to the high cost of land,
which the DfE was found to be paying almost 20 per cent over official
valuations for. Listening to evidence at the PAC hearing, MPs heard how one
school was being forced to make two staff redundancies as a result of being
unable to fund building maintenance costs. It was also noted that some 85 per
cent of schools are known to have asbestos. The only way to address this would
be to completely rebuild the schools at a total cost of £100bn. Analysing the
report’s findings, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said: “The outgoing
government committed to freezing school spending per pupil in cash-terms up to
2019–20. This implies a real-terms cut in spending per pupil of about 6.5 per
cent between 2015-16 and 2019–20.” The IFS added: “We haven’t had a proper
funding formula since the early 2000s, which has allowed various inequities
across areas to develop, which will only grow if left unaddressed.” The
committee added that the Government's pledge to create 500 free schools -
including some grammars - by 2020 involved spending “significant funds”, even
in areas with no shortage of pupil places at a time when existing schools
“struggle to live within their budgets and carry out routine maintenance”. INDEPENDENT

£10.50 a call?! Ofcom
opens investigation into the cost of 118 calls

The regulator will examine directory enquiries numbers,
which begin with 118, after some providers were found to be charging up to
£10.50 a call. It will also look at 070 numbers, which allow users to be
contacted on any phone at any location, and can cost up to £3.40 a minute. The
telecoms regulator said prices should be "transparent and fair". Ofcom,
which raised its concerns last week, said there were now more than 400
directory enquiry services offering a variety of options and prices, with call
costs ranging from 35p per call to £10.50. However, there is no stipulated cap
on such charges, meaning operators are free to charge up to a maximum of £23.97
for calls of less than a minute. Ofcom said it knew of one client who had
received a £150 bill for calling a 118 number. Meanwhile Ofcom said it was
aware of one consumer who called directory enquiries in 2009, and ended up with
a bill for £350. When directory enquiries was deregulated in 2003, calls to
BT's 192 service cost just 40p. BBC NEWS

HMRC steps up inquiry
into employment status of Hermes couriers

HM Revenue & Customs has stepped up its investigation
into the delivery company Hermes classifiying its couriers as self-employed,
while the business has also been hit with an employment rights lawsuit from the
GMB trade union. Drivers for Hermes were sent letters from HMRC over the
weekend asking them to provide evidence as the tax authority looks into their
employment status. In the letter, seen by the Guardian, HMRC requests that the
drivers disclose information such as their written contract and payslips, and
agree to a one-hour interview. “This will help us decide what your employment
status is/was,” it says. HMRC’s investigation follows one by the Guardian that
found some self-employed couriers were being paid less than the “national
living wage”, in an arrangement the company said had been approved by HMRC. Separately,
GMB has filed a lawsuit challenging Hermes over employment conditions for its
couriers, vowing to battle “bogus self-employment and gig economy
exploitation”. Maria Ludkin, the GMB’s legal director, said: “Under the false
claims of ‘flexibility’, Hermes seems to think it’s acceptable to wriggle out
of treating its workers with respect. “Guaranteed hours, sick pay, pension
contributions – these aren’t privileges to be bestowed when companies feel like
it; they are the legal right of all UK workers. The union won a similar case
against Uber last year, resulting in a ruling that the ride-hailing service
should pay the minimum wage and grant drivers holiday pay and other benefits.
Uber is contesting the ruling at the employment appeal tribunal. As well as
Uber and Hermes, takeaway food delivery service Deliveroo has come under
pressure from workers seeking improved conditions. The company was accused of
“creating vocabulary” last month, after issuing managers with a list of words
to ensure it did not accidentally use terms that indicated its motorbike riders
and cyclists were employees. GUARDIAN

AstraZeneca
shareholders revolt over chief executive's £13m pay

Nearly 39% of investors voted against the pharmaceutical
group’s 2016 remuneration report at its annual meeting in London, similar to
the rebellion it faced three years ago. Support for the new pay policy was much
stronger, with 96% of investors backing it. AstraZeneca’s chief executive,
Pascal Soriot, received a total pay package of £13.4m last year because a
long-term incentive plan and other rewards paid out. He was paid an annual
salary of £1.2m and an annual bonus of £1.2m, down from £2m the previous year.
But he pocketed a further £6.9m from a long-term incentive plan, plus a one-off
payment of £3.6m in compensation for bonuses he lost when he left his previous
employer. Royal London Asset Management, which holds 1% of AstraZeneca shares,
said it voted against the remuneration report and the chair of the remuneration
committee, but backed the new pay policy. Two advisory groups, PIRC and
Institutional Shareholder Services, had urged shareholders to vote against the
remuneration report and policy. PIRC described the £6.9m long-term incentive
plan payment as “excessive”. The housebuilding firm Persimmon suffered a near
10% protest vote over executive pay on Thursday, while Crest Nicholson has
pushed ahead with plans to pay out controversial bonuses, even though more than
58% of shareholders rejected its remuneration report last month in a
non-binding vote. GUARDIAN

UK pay growth outlook
is 'among gloomiest in advanced economies'

The prospects for pay growth in the UK are among the
gloomiest in advanced economies, with only Greece, Italy and Austria forecast
to suffer bigger falls in real wages by the end of 2018, according to a TUC
analysis. The trades union group said UK real wages – pay adjusted for the
effects of inflation – were on course to fall by 0.5% between the start of 2016
and the close of 2018, based on forecasts from the Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development. In contrast, real wages were predicted to rise in
most of the other 31 countries analysed. The average rate of real pay growth
for those 31 countries was 2.6% between 2016 and 2018. Workers suffered years
of declining real wages in the wake of the financial crisis. After a
two-and-a-half-year period of respite, pay recently started falling again in
real terms. That drop is the result of sluggish pay growth being overtaken by
inflation, which has risen as the pound’s weakness since the Brexit vote makes
imports more expensive. Higher oil prices have also raised inflation. The TUC
said UK real wages will be 6.8% lower in 2018 than they were in 2007 before the
financial crisis, according to OECD predictions. Only Italy and Greece will
have suffered bigger falls, of 7.3% and 25.2%, respectively. GUARDIAN

The risky loans that
let drivers on minimum wage buy a £19,000 sports car and could be fuelling a
debt crisis

Every day, flashy cars are being snapped up by motorists on
modest incomes. Our investigation found that drivers earning as little as
£8,200 a year can walk away with a brand new £12,500 Ford Fiesta, Britain's
most popular car. You would need to earn just £13,500 to be able to afford a
Mazda MX-5 — a flashy Japanese two-seater sports car that's worth roughly
£19,000. You'd need a salary of £20,000 to buy an Audi TT, which starts at
£28,500; while a Range Rover Sport, a £60,000 luxury 4x4 off-roader, requires
an income of £41,000 a year, according to figures from car finance broker
creditplus.co.uk. No wonder car sales are soaring in Britain. Indeed,
dealerships shifted a record 2.7 million new cars last year — the fifth
consecutive year of rising sales. According to the Finance and Leasing
Association, some 320,000 new and used vehicles were acquired through some form
of finance in March — £3.6billion worth of new cars and £1.4billion worth of
second-hand motors. Fuelling the boom is a relatively new type of finance
called Personal Contract Purchase (PCP) — a type of lease agreement that
dramatically cuts the monthly cost of owning a car. As many as nine in ten new
cars bought on finance are done so using PCP deals — £160 million in loans a
day. But fears are now growing that PCPs are luring millions of drivers into
taking on too much debt. So rapid has been the growth of PCP finance that the
City watchdog is concerned that some customers are being sold complex deals
they do not understand. It has launched an investigation. Once the money has
been loaned, many car finance firms package up the debt to flog to investors —
a chilling echo of the U.S. sub-prime mortgage crisis of 2007. Last year,
finance firms packaged and sold £6.7 billion-worth of car loans — more than
double the year before. Experts say that while a car finance bubble bursting
would not have the same devastating impact on the economy, it could still cause
significant damage. DAILY MAIL

Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron has pledged to put an end
to the government’s 1% public sector pay cap and uprate wages in line with
inflation, a commitment that is in line with Labour’s pledges according to its
leaked manifesto. Farron, who accused the Conservatives of treating health
workers “like dirt” at yesterday’s Royal College of Nursing (RCN) annual
conference, said nurses and teachers could be £780 better off by 2021 as part
of his party’s plans. Conversely, it is estimated that a new nurse would be
around £530 worse off by then under current Tory plans, while a primary school
teacher would lose out on £550 and an army sergeant £830, according to Lib Dem
analysis. The party’s leader also said that the controversial pay cap, branded
by many unions as a “cruel” policy, would leave the average civil servant £800
worse off by 2021. Vince Cable, Lib Dem shadow chancellor and the former
business secretary, said: “Public sector workers are facing a double blow at
the hands of this Conservative government, with years of pitiful increases to
pay combined with a Brexit squeeze caused by soaring inflation. “Our NHS and
schools are already struggling to recruit the staff they need. "Living
standards are falling, prices are rising and nurses are going to food banks –
but Theresa May doesn’t care.” Just last week, a leading trade union claimed
the cap policy will cost the UK economy around £16bn in lost wages by the end
of the decade. Analysis by the GMB also predicted that between 2017 and 2020,
five million workers in the public sector will find themselves out of pocket by
around £3,300 each. As expected, the cap has been an extremely controversial
policy since its inception, and is now threatening to drive the nursing
workforce to its first-ever strike in the RCN’s 100-year history.

A pound’s worth of product is not worth a pound when you’ve
made it. It’s worth a pound when someone has bought it. That’s why Britain
needs a pay rise.

There’s no rise in UK sales without a rise in UK incomes.
That’s why we’ve not had a recovery. Only a recovery in credit card debt!

Whichever party understands that, vote for them.

Wages have flatlined since July 2005, says the Office for
National Statistics. But it’s worse than that. Notoriously, the Average Weekly
Earnings (AWE) data never include the earnings of the self employed, which have been getting
worse, so that means there has been an overall decline.

If you’ve been one of the lucky ones who have seen his/her
earnings increase, you have a counterpart who saw the opposite. As the graph tells
us, the more you earned the more someone else didn’t. So if you’re trying to
sell them something, you’re in trouble too.

Those people earning less: are they all lazy and stupid?
Nigh on half the workforce?!

A balance must be struck between earnings rising too fast
(businesses and their customers can’t afford it. So the business goes bust) and
too slow or not at all (businesses can fill their shelves, but nobody can
afford to buy the damn stuff. So the business goes bust). That balance has been
lost since the 1970s. For too long wages, as a percentage of the nation’s GDP, have been falling.

Yes, I said pray. Because businesses, in competition, find
it genuinely difficult to coordinate a pay rise lest someone breaks ranks and
win-wins by keeping pay down while selling to those who got the rise. That’s why
unions do us all a favour, by coordinating that pay rise. Government too, by
legislating that rise.

The Resolution Foundation, digging into Office for National
Statistics data on wages, says around 40 per cent of the workforce are in
sectors where pay is falling in real terms.

This is despite another “good performance” on jobs, with
fast growth in hours worked, employment remaining at a record high and
unemployment falling by 45,000. Although, notoriously again, the official employment
data says anyone who has worked a measly one hour a week is “employed”. One
hour! What a job that must be!

We’re wasting our time if jobs are being created, but
incomes aren’t rising. We’re driving with the hand brake on.

“But having a job matters more than having a pay rise!” says
the tub thumping right, who see low pay as a way of creating jobs. These are the same people who say “Those Commies, they
think full employment matters more than growing the economy.” They’re asking
for the same thing as the Commies now. Beautiful! Someone should tell them that
if wages don’t rise, economies simply don’t grow *.

* ...except, of course, through immigration. More people,
more GDP. Simples. No wonder neither New Labour nor the Tories cut immigration.
Immigration is not the cause of our problems **, it’s the only thing that’s making
our economy look as though it has a future.

** Do you seriously think if the population had risen through more British babies instead of immigrants, those past governments would have built the 250,000 houses a year we need, increased spending on the NHS and schools to shorten those queues, and raised those wages?

According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) the
freeze in benefit rates and cuts to child tax credit, coupled with the rollout
of universal credit, which has become less generous as a result of changes to
work allowances, signal “large losses” for low-income households. If the cuts
announced in 2015 were fully in place now, nearly 3m working households with
children on tax credits would be an average of £2,500 a year worse off, with
larger families losing more. The scheduled cuts for lower-income families come
alongside tax breaks worth £5bn a year that predominantly benefit middle- and
higher-income households. Although the average impact of tax and benefit
changes since 2015 has been relatively small so far, planned benefit cuts will
reduce government spending by about £15bn a year in the long run, with the
poorest working-age households facing losses of between 4% and 10% of income a
year, the IFS says. The impact of the planned cuts on the poorest working-age
families over the next five years will be much greater than those imposed
during the 2010-15 coalition government. Pensioner households are mostly
protected from future benefit cuts. Tom Waters, a research economist at the
IFS, said: “As suggested by the 2015 Conservative manifesto, the government
have announced income tax cuts that mostly benefit middle- and higher-income
households and working-age benefit cuts that mostly hit lower-income
households. But while the tax cuts have largely already been delivered, most of
the benefit cuts are yet to take effect.” GUARDIAN

NHS needs £25bn in
emergency cash, say NHS leaders

An influential group representing NHS trusts says that the
care provided by hospitals and GP surgeries will suffer over the next few years
unless the prime minister provides an £5bn a year for the next three years –
and a further £10bn of capital for modernising equipment and buildings. NHS
Providers, an association of NHS Foundation Trusts and Trusts, is preparing to
release its own manifesto next week, calling on the Conservatives and Labour to
end what it calls the austerity funding of the health service. Hospitals needed
that £5bn a year to get rid of their deficits of £800m-£900m a year, fulfil new
NHS commitments on cancer and mental health and improve their performance
against key waiting time targets. The NHS also needed a further £10bn for
capital spending on building and repairing premises, buying new equipment and
modernising how care is provided, she added. That is the sum which a recent
report commissioned by the Department of Health said the service needed for
those purposes. A second group, the NHS Confederation, which represents
hospitals and ambulance and mental health services, urged May to commit to
giving the NHS £8bn-a-year annual budget increases after 2020-21, when the
current funding settlement expires. The DH’s budget is due to reach £133.1bn by
March 2021. Niall Dickson, its chief executive, said NHS services were so
stretched that it would have to go back to getting at least the 4%-a-year
budget increases it enjoyed historically between its creation in 1948 and 2010.
After that, the coalition government limited rises to 1% annually. Simon
Stevens, the chief executive of NHS England, has voiced concern that per capita
health funding will decline in 2018-19 and 2019-20. It is due to fall from its
current level of £2,223 a head this year by £16 next year and £7 in 2019. GUARDIAN

McDonald’s offers
fixed contracts to 115,000 UK zero-hours workers

Credit Suisse chief executive Tidjane Thiam and the bank's
board of directors have offered to cut The move is a significant development in
the debate about employee rights because McDonald’s is one of the biggest users
of zero-hours contracts in the country. Sports Direct has also used workers on
zero-hour contracts in its shops. The fast-food chain is to offer fixed-hours
contracts after staff in its restaurants complained they were struggling to get
loans, mortgages and mobile phone contracts because they were not guaranteed
employment each week. Zero-hour contracts are controversial because companies
can use them to exploit workers, offering unpredictable working hours and
changing shifts at short notice. The TUC has called for the government to ban
zero-hours contracts. It has found that staff on these contracts earns a third
less per hour than the average worker. McDonald’s has been trialling the shift
to fixed-hours contracts in 23 sites across the country. The company said that
about 80% of workers in the trial chose to remain on flexible contracts and it
has seen an increase in levels of employee and customer satisfaction after the
offer. Staff have been offered contracts in line with the average hours per
week they work. This includes contracts of either four, eight, 16, 30 or 35
hours a week. The company will initially expand fixed contracts to 50 more
restaurants before rolling it out nationwide to existing and new employees
later this year. Paul Pomroy, the chief executive of McDonald’s UK, said: “The
vast majority of our employees are happy with their flexible contracts, but
some have told us that more fixed hours would help them get better access to
some financial products.” He added: “The hard work of our restaurant teams has
enabled us to deliver 44 consecutive quarters of growth in the UK.” The company
has been targeted by protesters over its treatment of staff. Earlier this
month, campaigners from Fast Food Rights and Better Than Zero dressed as clowns
and demonstrated outside a McDonald’s restaurant in Glasgow over its use of
zero-hours contracts. The TUC has warned that 3.5 million people could be stuck
in insecure work such as zero-hours contracts, agency work or low-paid
self-employment by 2022 – 290,000 more than at present. GUARDIAN

The UK's middle class
remains one of the smallest and poorest in Europe despite having expanded the
most over two decades

The United Kingdom’s middle class has seen one of the
biggest expansions among Western countries over the past two decades but it
remains one of the smallest and least wealthy, new analysis by Pew Research
Centre has shown. To qualify as middle class via Pew's income-based model, a
family of four in the UK would need a cumulative disposable income of between
just over $29,000 and $87,300 (£19,000 - £57,350 in 2010 rates). Among Western
European countries this is the lowest except for Italy’s minimum of $25,000 and
Spain’s $24,500. The study covers the two decades between 1991 and 2010 for
Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands,
Norway, Spain, the UK and the US. But while middle classes shrunk in seven out
of the 11 countries, including Italy, Germany and Spain, mirroring a long-term
trend in the US, Ireland saw its middle class expand most, followed by the UK. The
report also shows that the UK had the biggest share of people on upper-income
in Europe at 14 per cent, second only to the US (15 per cent). Norway, on the
other hand, had the smallest proportion of population on upper income at 6 per
cent as it also counts the biggest middle class, which makes up 80 per cent of
its population. The Pew said that countries where incomes are more equal have
larger shares of middle-income adults, and vice versa, suggesting that
countries like Norway and Denmark are more equal than countries like the UK and
Italy. For a UK family of four to be defined on ‘upper income’, it would need
to have a cumulative disposable income of around $87,000, compared to Ireland’s
$90,000. That is $43,600 for an individual in the UK, compared to $45,000 in
Ireland. DAILY MAIL

Arrests as Newcastle
and West Ham raided in £5m tax probe

Newcastle's managing director Lee Charnley was among
"several men within professional football" who were arrested. He was
released without charge at about 17:00 BST. HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC)
deployed 180 officers across the UK and France. The BBC understands the
suspected income tax and National Insurance fraud amounts to £5m. HMRC said it
searched premises in the north east and south east of England, and seized
business records, financial records, computers and mobile phones. Newcastle
were promoted to the Premier League on Monday, just 348 days after relegation. According
to its 2015-16 accounts, the club had a turnover of £126m, paid out £75m in
players' wages and recorded pre-tax loss of £4.1m. HMRC raided West Ham's
offices at the London Olympic Stadium where the club moved in August, having
played at Upton Park since 1904. Companies House figures for 2015-16 show it
turned over £142m, paid out £85m in player's wages and made a pre-tax loss of
£4.8m. In January, a Parliamentary Committee revealed 43 players, 12 clubs and
eight agents were the subject of "open inquiries" by HMRC. The Public
Accounts Committee highlighted particular concerns about tax evasion in the
football industry and the "misuse" of image rights to reduce tax
liabilities. BBC NEWS

Barclays boss faces
shareholder revolt over whistleblowing case

Barclays’ chief executive is facing a shareholder revolt at
next month’s annual meeting because of the ongoing regulatory investigation
into his attempts to unmask a whistleblower. Shareholders are being advised to
abstain from the annual vote to re-elect the American banker Jes Staley to the
board by ISS, an influential adviser to major investors, in a sign that the
bank could face a significant protest vote against its chief executive at the
10 May AGM. Staley will be braced for questions about his conduct when the bank
reports its first-quarter results on Friday. He has issued a written apology
for becoming too personally involved in the whistleblowing case, which related
to the conduct of Tim Main, who worked with Staley at US bank JP Morgan and was
then recruited to Barclays in a senior role last June. Both the Financial
Conduct Authority and the Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority are
investigating the matter. Barclays has formally reprimanded Staley and insisted
that there will be a significant reduction in his bonus, which was £1.4m last
year. Not only is it unusual for City regulators to investigate the conduct of
chief executives of major financial institutions, it is also unusual for major
proxy firms to issue advice to abstain against their re-election to the board. GUARDIAN

GDP is seriously messed up. It is often thought of simply as
the most common measurement of the size of a country’s economy – how could that
be controversial? But far from being impartial, GDP considers all sorts of
negative things as good for the economy and ignores other things that are
actually really beneficial. Worse than that, it incentivises governments to
prioritise those negative things at the expense of the positive – and that can
be hugely damaging for a healthy society. Lorenzo Fioramonti is the professor
of political economy at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, and author of
The World After GDP. According to Lorenzo, the perfect GDP Man – someone who
lived to optimise economic growth – would be ‘obese, driving a car to work
every day and stuck in traffic, probably have a serious chronic disease and be
on the verge of a divorce because after a divorce means more fees to lawyers
but also two houses to be bought and one house to sell’. He adds that in theory
to maximise GDP, no one would spend any time with their children and work all
the time instead. That way, there would be two contributions to GDP instead of
none – one of the parent earning money and a second of the carer being paid to
look after their children and then spending their earnings. Furthermore, car
accidents, poor health and destruction boost GDP, while maintaining and keeping
things as they are – such as good health and natural resources - does not. He
points out that the two countries that have seen the strongest GDP growth in
the last few years have been Libya and South Sudan – both of which have
suffered civil wars. DAILY MAIL

Tate has come under fire after it asked members of staff,
many of whom are not paid the London living wage, to contribute towards a boat
for departing director, Nicholas Serota, just one week after their canteen
discount was taken away. A notice which went up in the staff rooms of both Tate
Modern and Tate Britain on Wednesday asking employees – including security,
cleaners, those maintain the galleries or work in the cafe and gift shop – to
“put money towards a sailing boat” as a “surprise gift” for Serota. The notice
said management had thought “long and hard” about an appropriate gift for the
director, who is leaving in May after 28 years at the Tate. “Nick loves sailing
and this would be a lasting and very special reminder of the high regard which
I know so many of us have for Nick and his contribution to Tate,” the plea for
donations added. The appearance of the notice was a source of anger among
junior staff. The gallery has been embroiled in disputes over low pay and its
decision to outsource a large number of jobs to agency Securitas, which does
not pay the London living wage and pay workers less than those hired directly
by Tate for the same jobs. The notice was still up on Thursday morning but by
lunchtime had been taken down. Tracy Edwards, the PCS Union representative for
Tate staff, said several had contacted her about it, adding that she had
originally thought the notice was a spoof. “The staff at Tate are underpaid
paid and overworked, and haven’t had appropriate pay rises, and this just
demonstrates how divorced from reality the management at Tate are,” she said. A
staff member at Tate, who is hired through Securitas and spoke to the Guardian
on condition of anonymity, spoke of the “disgust” among colleague when they saw
the request for donations. “There was a mixture of shock and laughter,” he
said. “The chasm that exists between upper management and the staff on the
ground is just farcical and this just made it clearer than ever. For us,
Serota’s legacy among staff is one of privatisation and union busting and
turning the Tate into Westfield with pictures.” GUARDIAN